larger hands. You can continue the rotation to about 150 degrees, useful when shooting at a low angle. This is a clever, older design that I've yet to see copied. Inside the LCD recess are a power switch, photo flash, display, full auto Easy Q, and image stabilization buttons. On the LCD bezel sit a secondary zoom switch, record button and Q(uick) Menu button. The battery and the SDHC slot sit on the bottom of the camcorder, a poor location if you plan to shoot on a tripod, which completely obstructs the hatch. It also provides a built-in electronic lens cover, a nice feature that has become typical in camcorders in this price range, and the stereo microphones sit on either side of the lens, gaining more separation than we typically see in consumer camcorders. Unfortunately, though, the touch-screen interface is relatively annoying. I generally find that touch screens aren't very comfortable to work with on the 2.7-inch displays common to this class, and Samsung's proves to be no exception. I found the system to be frequently unresponsive, and require multiple presses to recognize input. That said, the menus are organized fairly well. However, even though the camcorder offers some manual adjustments, like shutter speed and aperture, they're inconveniently buried in the menu system. You can't even pull them up with the Q Menu button; that's reserved for switching storage media (SD or SSD), scene modes, video and photo resolution, white balance, exposure compensation, and focus (auto, manual, or TouchPoint). The camcorder records 1,920x1,080/60i, as well as 720p and 480p, video using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 encoding, similar to that used by AVCHD. Though Samsung doesn't report its bit rates, QuickTime reported that most of my test clips encoded at about 17 megabits per second, which is pretty typical for this class; some camcorders can handle up to 24 megabits per second, but if you're not planning on editing the video you probably won't notice the difference. You can fit about 7.5 minutes of footage per gigabyte of storage at highest quality; clips are limited to a maximum of 1.8GB.
Key comparative specs
Sensor
Sony Samsung H MXHandycam H106/H105/ H D RH104/H100 XR100 2.2-megapixel CMOS 1/4.5 inch
Lens
4-megapixel Exmor CMOS 1/5 inch
No 2.7-inch, 211,000pixel touch screen 80GB hard disk 16Mbps
3.3megapixel CMOS 1/3.2 inch 12x f1.8-3.0 42.9 514.8mm (16:9) No 2.7-inch, 211,000pixel touch screen 60GB hard disk 24Mbps
No
Yes
10x f1.8-2.2 10x f1.8-2.5 - 497mm 3.3-33mm (actual) 42 (16:9)
EVF
No
LCD
2.7-inch, 230,000pixel touch screen
64GB/32GB/16GB SSD; SDHC Maximum bit rate n/a Manual shutter Yes speed and iris Primary Media
Canon Vixia HG20
Accessory shoe
No
No
Yes
Mic/headphone jacks Audio Body dimensions (WHD, inches) Operating weight (ounces)
No
No
Yes
2 channels 2.5 x 2.4 x 5.1 14
5.1 channels 2 channels 2.8 x 2.8 x 2.9 x 2.5 x 5.1 5.4 14.5
17.6